


Nothing Missing

by Stariceling



Category: Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi | Okamisan and her Seven Companions
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-30
Updated: 2014-10-30
Packaged: 2018-02-23 08:32:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2541170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stariceling/pseuds/Stariceling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryoushi has been told he's not enough for Ryouko in too many ways, but she still wants him with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Missing

**Author's Note:**

> For asexuality awareness week: A ship you see as an asexual one.
> 
> I think most things I've read with asexual romance focus on an asexual and allosexual partner. In this case, I felt it fit for both of them.

There are always goodnight kisses. Ryouko insists on that. Her fingers weave through his, trapping his hands and disarming him. Her hip presses against his waist as she leans over him, but other than that it’s just her hands pinning his, her hair tickling his face, and the press of her mouth on his.

Their friends like to say that he caught her, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like that at all. Ryoushi can’t help feeling his quarry had to turn at the last moment and snap him up. Teeth nip at his lower lip before he finally leans up into the challenge to kiss her back.

She pushes herself up to look at him. The curtain of her hair falls over him like a blind, and at least for a moment her gaze isn’t a threat.

Before his phobia can come to the surface she flops down beside him with a huff of breath, flipping her hair out of the way in one careless motion. Her arm drapes over his chest until he can push himself up and turn into her, seeking to hold and be held.

The stronger she grows the more he sees her gentle side shine through. He loves her firm hands on his back and the softness of her unconscious smile. He loves the duality of her, who she chooses to be and who she can’t help being.

He loved her too long before he was told he would never be good enough. He’s not strong enough or brave enough or passionate enough, too weak for her on every front.

Even the way he loved her was considered weak. He couldn’t imagine loving her more, but it wasn’t enough. If he didn’t want her sexually he wasn’t a real man. If he didn’t love her sexually it wasn’t a real love. And there was no training in the world that would change that part of him, even for her.

She was angry when he told her, but not in the way he expected. “Are you saying that just to pity me? What did Ringo tell you?!”

There was a lot of verbal scrambling and snapping before the truth could sink in on both sides. It had never even occurred to him that she might be asexual too.

“I’ve never known someone else like me.” She said it first. The way her crossed arms clenched tight over her stomach said even more.

He tried to approach her as cautiously as he might as a wounded animal. At the last second she turned sharply away so that his hand fell on her back.

Her quivering muscles slowly relaxed under his hand, until it seemed safe to lean into her. It was the one thing he could do, and sometimes she read more from his body language than he could put into words. He slipped his arms around her middle, feeling the long breath she let out.

“I thought it was just something wrong with me,” she whispered. It twisted in his gut to learn she had heard all the same things, just in different words. ‘That’s normal for a girl. You just need to meet the right man.’

Her hands gripped his, squeezing so tight it hurt. Her words thinned out into the whine of an injured wolf. That way lay old wounds, still healing. There was the decision that her sexuality was something to be forced to the surface, the attempt to fix her by force.

“There’s nothing about you that needs to be fixed!” Everyone kept trying to pull her one way or another, trying to make her into something else when she was wonderful the way she was. “There’s so much to you. There’s nothing missing!”

She shrugged her way out of his arms. For a moment he was disoriented without her hair in his face and then she was there hugging him and he was momentarily lost in a panic of not knowing where to put his hands.

“I’m glad even you can be brave sometimes.” She didn’t have to say she was afraid to tell him. He didn’t know how to say bravery was nothing compared to her feeling safe. He wanted to protect all the places where she was still healing, until she could grow even stronger.

He didn’t realize until hours later that he’d said things to her he would never say to himself. He didn’t realize until she told him the same, that he already had everything that mattered.

Maybe it was strange that was the first night they slept together. Ryouko didn’t want to go home, and he didn’t want to leave her side. She trusted him enough that they could stay together.

That first morning he woke up to her hand clasped around his, her sleepy smile, and the realization that his bangs had decided to stick out every way except shielding his eyes. He had to hide his face in the pillow while she turned her back on him until he could recover.

There are always good morning kisses now. It’s the first thing he thinks of, waking up. Sometimes on her forehead and eyelids as she wakes up and sometimes soft on her lips once her eyes crack sleepily open.

He is learning to trust that there is nothing missing in the way he loves her. She is learning to see herself as whole. They both need the time they take together, bracketing days and nights with kisses, to remember they are not alone.


End file.
